


Breeding Lilacs

by etherati



Series: Watchmen Zombie!AU [10]
Category: Watchmen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Borderline Necrophilia Wheee, Dan's List of Kinks, Danger Kink, M/M, One Shot, Porn With Plot, Ror Has Issues, Smut, Trust Kink, look I quoted eliot AGAIN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easier to ignore these things, frozen and buried under snow. Warm times are not so forgiving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breeding Lilacs

**Author's Note:**

> This is the porny followup to 'Now, as Before' that I feel I shortchanged the kinkmeme folks (and Dan and Ror, honestly) out of. Thanks eternally to brancher, tuff_ghost, and [Liodain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain) for beta'ing and polishing and general support. :)

**I.****  
**  
It’s something about violence and trust and touch, all twined together, inseparable in the close darkness of need. Something about fear – about adrenaline, about loss, about not _needing_ to be afraid – about how blood and sweat smell the same, all salt and exhilaration and giddy terror, riding heady and high in the senses.

Something about life, singing in the flesh, fragile and beautiful and intangible and only visible from the corner of the eye.

Something about warmth.

Something.

*

[He spins and he can hear the sirens somewhere, distant and detached, and Daniel is not down, is not hurt or even knocked dizzy, is winding cord around his captive’s wrists and hauling the man over to a lightpost with an easy strength and there’s blood but it isn’t Daniel’s – and he’s energized, flying on some internal high, and these are the moments that Rorschach hates himself for looking up, for not just restraining his own opponents and muttering darkly and moving on with the night.]

[All the same, though: some nights the blood _is_ his, and those are even worse.]

*

[He hands enough change to the newsvendor for three papers, and the man’s long since learned not to take notice of the rough line of thick black sutures running across his palm. The vendor is flushed against the cold, blood rallying to warm the skin in the face of attacking wind and snow. Everyone on the street is red-faced and puffing and beating hands together, the sound dull and muffled through knit gloves and mittens, life forcing and elbowing its way into tomorrow. He looks stiff and dead amongst these survivors, a homeless corpse like the ones they find too frequently behind dumpsters and under nests of newsprint, given up and empty – but when he gets back to the brownstone, Daniel is as flushed and glowing as anyone on the street, with an unselfish smile that says ‘I’ll share, I’ll share.’]

*

[It’s a late freeze in early March, and Daniel holds up the blankets, brings them back down around him – and there’s more to it than just body heat, just BTUs filling an enclosed space. Daniel curls his arm higher, threads fingers through hair stiff with clinging frost, and there’s something that feels like the headrush of standing up too quickly, and the walls might just be pressing in that little bit more ominously in the half-light, but he’s cold and he ignores it; presses his cheek against the warm skin of Daniel’s arm, and stays like that for a long time.]

*

[He still dreams, and sometimes, every now and then, they aren’t nightmares.]

*

  
**II.****  
**  
There is a power outage in Daniel’s neighborhood, and they head out early, feet to the pavement as soon as the sun clears the jagged toothy skyline to the west and gives them marginal cover to work with. Dusk falls more heavily without streetlights blinking on, one by one, herding shadows into the deepest corners. There will be blood tonight; the criminals prefer the darkness too, and so they stay within the blacked-out area where they know they’ll be most needed.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Daniel says, adjusting his goggles by starlight.

There is no response, because of course the city is always shadowed by its violence and greed and apathy, and neither of them needs much light to see by.

*

The night passes. There are muggings and there is gang violence and at roughly midnight, there are a woman’s pale hands that flutter over another woman’s face and arms like lunar moths unwilling to land. A stream of words unwind into the silence of the alleyway, words like ‘too late’ and ‘don’t go’ and ‘never got the chance _never got the chance_– ’

They have nothing to say that will ever make it better, so they say exactly nothing – there isn’t even any of the usual under-the-breath garbage from Rorschach about depravity and indecency, words that would be hypocritical anyway, coming from a man who spends more nights in Dan’s bed than his own, curled against the curve of his partner’s stomach – just walk some distance away, and give her what illusion of peace she can find until the police arrive.

*

Three hours. They haven’t spoken a word in three hours, and they’re too busy fighting off the remaining dregs of a new up-and-coming street gang to think about why. There’s certainly no time for conversation now, steel flashing past his face, fists and feet sliding through the darkness, the far-off sounds of traffic and shouted conversation drowned out by adrenaline and the slap of bone meeting bone and heavy bodies hitting the ground.

And there’ve been a lot of near-misses, knives or crowbars that have come too close, but there are every night, every single night they go out into this jungle – opportunities for tragedy around every corner. This is the life they’ve chosen and it carries its risks and they’re pushing their luck with every step and he knows that if one of them ever falls the other will survive to see it because that’s just how these things _work_–

–and the woman’s hands are fluttering over something cold and unmoving, the image hanging detached in the back of his mind–

He feels his fist fall into a crumpling face and the man he’s been fighting drops away. Across the alley, there’s a motion he can’t track, a snapping sound of bone. A length of pipe clatters to the ground; the thug bearing it follows, screaming and clutching his arm.

Then silence.

Breath comes back all at once, and it feels like it’s over, like they’re safe – but Rorschach is coming towards him with more urgency than makes any kind of sense until Dan hears the sound of a hammer pulling back, far too close to his head.

*

He won’t remember, later, exactly what the sequence of events was – how he came to be leaning back against the wall, ears ringing and gunpowder-scent in his nose, a familiar weight bearing him towards the ground. Then the weight is gone, and there is another scream, in a voice he does not recognize.

*

They call it a night after that, nerves shaking them both into unacceptable carelessness, and it’s still early: the sun is two hours below the watery horizon. The power has not come back, and there is no light coming in through the windows of Daniel’s home but what is provided by the moon and by the thousands of suddenly-visible stars and by the streetlights of distant boroughs, and that isn’t a lot. Daniel is asleep already, adrenaline drop-off sending him deep, and Rorschach twists around in the sheets. A little light is enough, his eyes glowing like golden disks, and he faces Daniel and pulls back and just _looks_.

It’s familiar. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before: the tension lines _(it was an unusually long night for such a **short **night)_ eased and smoothed, the mouth _(forming around something formless, but that's all there ever is in the dark)_ slightly open, breath lifting the unruly strands of hair that have fallen over his face. But he can also see where the bullet would have gone in; where it would have come out, and the vision is etched over the reality as if on glass – an overlay, a cracked window that cannot help but splinter and skew the world viewed through it.

Something had distracted Daniel, diverted his attention, made him slow – made him too shortsighted to notice the gun. The last man’s face had been broad and sallow, with sunken eyes that’d gone wide and round when his arm had snapped in Rorschach’s hands. It had made him think of the spotted wings of moths.

And Nite Owl might have nightvision and gadgetry, might have his red-tinted, flat-shadowed world, but _Daniel_ will never know, in darkness or light, what it is to see this clearly.

*

  
**III.****  
**  
“Distracted, Daniel.”

Dan doesn’t look back, just fingers the last button and peels the white cotton of his shirt away; drops it onto the bench. The watch slips off and joins it. Nearby, his costume hangs – the lightweight one, because the nights are getting warm – and the inquisitive sound he makes echoes more loudly than he intends in the cavernous space.

There’s a shuffling sound of leather shifting over cloth, and when Rorschach speaks again, he’s closer, off to the side. Still behind him. It’s a flanking, diagonal approach that makes Dan think of a predator trying not to trigger its prey’s bolting instinct, sliding in along the periphery of vision. “You were distracted last night,” Rorschach repeats. “Distracted most nights lately. That last one almost got a shot in.”

“I know, I’m sorry about that. I’ll work on it.”

There’s another shuffling, Rorschach picking his way past in the other direction. Dan tries not to think about the fact that in nature documentaries, the deer or antelope or whatever it is always gets it in the end. It’s a ridiculous metaphor, but one he keeps stuttering over and coming back to – a damaged groove on an old record that simply repeats and repeats and does not move on – and maybe that should be telling him something. He pulls the costume down from its locker; sits down in the bench, and starts working the pants on.

“You kissed me.”

There’s something wrong with the ventilation ducts, because in the silence that follows, uniform pants halfway rucked up over his knees, Dan can hear something knocking and rattling against the sheet metal, far away. He didn’t really just say_–  
_  
“…what?”

There are soft-leathered hands from behind settled to either side of his face, fingers splayed over his cheeks, before he even registers that Rorschach has covered what space remained between them, gotten so _close._ “Last fall,” he clarifies, and the hands are firm, holding him in place. “After…”

“After?”

Rorschach seems unwilling to complete the thought, and his breath is unexpectedly close, roiling cold over the back of Dan’s neck. It’s not surprising at all when he ducks his head to press his mouth there, dry and uncomplicated, and the mask must have gone up at some point and…

The words rumble against his skin. “Like that.”

Distantly, the memory clicks. Oh. _After._ And it’s only a word, five letters, but it’s wrapped up in pain and blood and the sharp-edged smell of kerosene and cold stars and confessions, and all Dan can be in the face of that memory is delicately, meticulously cautious. “…yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“I…” Dan trails off, shifting on the bench, getting his uniform pulled up under him and situated. The seconds spool out.

He could make something up – spin an excuse, like he does in his head every night, changing out of his costume half-hard and it’s always from the adrenaline, from the last fight, even when it isn’t – because he can see where this is going, painful framing or not, and isn’t sure he’s ready for this conversation right now.

“We had a scare,” he says, and it’s an understatement, but the honesty is spilling out before he’s had a chance to even make the decision. “And I needed to… I don’t know. Know you were really there. Something.” A pause, head shifting incrementally in Rorschach’s grasp. “I wasn’t really thinking at the time.”

The grip doesn’t let up; if anything, it tightens. A long moment passes in which Rorschach seems to be turning the statement around, getting a taste for it under his tongue.

“You almost died last night,” Rorschach finally says, matter-of-fact, and it’s the first time it’s been laid out that plainly, the first time Dan’s really thought about the reality of it_–  
_  
And Rorschach’s kissing his neck again, mouth open against the skin now, pressing into the deep layers of muscle and around bone and god, Dan had never considered the knob of his spine to be a particularly sensitive nerve cluster but the breath still catches in his chest, hitching in the quiet. Everything is bright and sharp and he knows his pupils must be blown, pulse throbbing dully behind his ears.

“Doesn’t feel like enough,” Rorschach breathes over the wet skin, raising gooseflesh, and there’s something in his voice that’s slipping his control, something that sounds a little bit like fear.

Dan lets that wash over; closes his eyes, and thinks about this underground place, this haven, with its smells of machine oil and old blood and sweat – and about the ballooning way Rorschach’s presence has of filling the entire basement with stillness and expectation. About how safe they really are, here.

He ducks his head, slipping out of Rorschach’s grip, and turns around on the bench to face his partner directly. There’s a long space of nothing, and Dan counts his own heartbeats to measure to stretch of it, hitting twenty before he realizes that Rorschach likely hasn’t even made it to one yet. His fingers are slid under the rolled edge of latex before he knows what he’s doing, disappearing between inkblots and skin.

Rorschach is frowning under the arch of the mask. His mouth opens to say something, but it never gets there, and he smells even more strongly of stale blood this close in, mixed with something sickly sweet and dangerous. Tastes like it, too, lips parting in surprise and still warm from Dan’s skin.

It doesn’t last long, and it’s not very involved: just a brief press of contact, imparting warmth and a suggestion of more depth than it actually asks for. Dan feels a flush rising in his cheeks and running along the edges of his ears when he pulls back; the skin under his hand is still absent any color, but lips hang open in shock or something like it, tongue darting out to taste what’s left behind.

“Better?” Dan asks, voice careful, tracing the situation with an acute awareness of its fragility.

An unintelligible noise – and Dan’s gotten good at interpreting the usual vocabulary, but this is something new – and Rorschach is pulling the mask back down over his face with a sharp, careless motion. Is turning, and stalking away, and climbing into Archie’s hatch, apparently content to wait there for however long it takes Dan to finish with his costume and join him.

Dan sighs, and reaches for his belt. Through the Owlship’s great glass eyes – and out of the corner of his own – he can swear he sees the blur of a pacing figure, of dark-gloved hands gesticulating in the dim, empty space.

*

“No,” he says simply, an hour later, and he will not elaborate.

*

Three days pass, and Rorschach is shrugging off every attempt at contact, giving both Dan and Nite Owl a wider berth than he ever has, deliberate and obvious – and uncertain, in the way he wobbles on that boundary, weaves under the pull of inevitable decisions. Then it is a new moon in a neighborhood still without power, and he strays too far to the periphery, and they lose each other in the darkness.

There is a horrible, horrible noise, wet and heavy, coming from what feels like too far away, somewhere in the corridor-maze of alley walls. He’s running.

_(That sounded too much like–)  
_  
_(But that doesn’t make any **sense**–)  
_  
By the time Dan finds him, everything is still and quiet again; the alley smells like slick iron, but Rorschach himself is clean. There are two bodies: one ripped apart, more blood outside than in. The other is all white and beaten violet – unconscious, battered, nearly dead. For nearly a full minute, there is no movement.

“City made a pact with us, Daniel,” Rorschach finally offers, tone wavering and dangerous. He walks to the mutilated victim, gloves off and white hands stark against the shadows. Crouches. Doesn’t touch. “Be better than the monsters that made us.”

Dan nods woodenly, one ear out for sirens, stunned silent by the sheer shock-horror brutality of the scene.

… the mutation burned out months ago, and they both know it, and they don’t need to say it out loud but it’s there, hanging: this guy was _stable_. This was a choice, a decision, not a compulsion riding in the blood.

Does that make it worse, or better?

“Unforgiveable,” Rorschach condemns, something hollow and breaking in his voice as he shoves back to his feet. His movement is jerky, uncoordinated, the tremor of more violence bottled up than he’s allowed himself the luxury of releasing, screaming to transmute into something else – something that could shatter him, shake him to pieces. His hands will be bruised under the gloves, later; he still clenches and unclenches them around nothing.

And when a hand settles onto his shoulder, the gesture is so guileless and human that all he can do is turn into it, chin ducking to his chest, every ounce of self-control spent and the contact more appreciated and despised and _needed_ than it’s ever been.

*

He stands in front of the hall mirror, mask in his hands – he doesn’t like doing this, because silvered glass is too honest by far – and sees a familiar rough ugliness compounded by the blue-and-ivory pallor of blood sitting too long between beats, by the neat row of stitches running down his throat, by the horror-film eyes. He thinks of fouled blood and lockpicks shivering in his hands and fever-delirium and a consuming hunger and a killing cold, and hands that never stopped reaching for him, grabbing his arms, pulling him back – bringing him home. Keeping him tucked in against a warm and beating heart he has no right to corrupt, and he wonders how it ever got to this point; how he came to allow himself this vulnerability, this closeness, this terrifying level of intimacy, and the word comes back: Unforgiveable.

But those hands were not ignorant, they were never _unknowing_. They searched out and found the darkest, most dangerous parts of him, pried them out into the light where there were no excuses, no looking away, and they stayed.

“Rorschach?” comes a voice from the kitchen, the basement door closing on unoiled hinges. Daniel’s standing in the doorframe looking out at him, halfway out of his costume, clearly concerned for the way he’d bolted upstairs without a word. His hand is strong and sure on the frame and his face is lost in worry and compassion and his voice is honest, and it makes something jump inside of Rorschach – but only inside, where it can be hidden and tamped down on, where it carries no greedy demands.

“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, and Rorschach closes his eyes and nods, and it’s a lie but Daniel doesn’t push; just looks at him, something unbearably knowing in his expression, and turns to go back downstairs and finish changing.

And if wanting this is wrong, as base as the crawling, desperate corruption of the city they fight through every night, but worse because they are supposed to be above these things, supposed to be _better_ – it is at least a consolation that he does not want it for the same filthy, selfish reasons.

*

  
**IV.****  
**  
Dan has been expecting the tension between them to break violently – expecting to find himself spun against a wall, against a workbench in the basement, fingers like cold iron digging into his shoulders, dropped headfirst into this thing without a moment to catch his breath. He knows it’s coming; he can feel it strung between them like razorwire pulled taut, ready to slice his fingers to shreds should he make any effort to feel it or force it or find its shape in the dark. Somehow, bracing for a fist to the gut has always been easier.

But in the end, it just bubbles over quietly. It’s early in the morning, sky going a rose-grey that carries in through the window on warm eddies, and there’s a weight settling onto the bed next to him, and he’s only half-awake and this is nothing unusual, not anymore. It’s only when he feels the shock of a cool palm shifting across his skin under the sheet, skimming and barely there – senses the presence leaning over him rather than stretching alongside, that full consciousness starts to filter back in, breaking apart the grey haze into something sharp-edged and bright. Before he can process or react, there’s a cold press against his mouth, clumsy and awkward but deep, drawing something guttural and needy up and out of him, riding on his breath.

Then the mouth is gone, and his eyes are open and blinking, and Rorschach is looking at him; he has his head canted to one side in a street-familiar gesture, looking and thinking and trying to understand. Trying to fit pieces together that don’t appear to match, that mean next to nothing on their own, but they both know by now: everything means something. He’s looking at Dan like he’s examining a crime scene, and maybe he is, but there’s something in the set of thin lips under the cat-glow eyes that says that that’s not all he’s doing, that Dan is not the only thing he’s evaluating. The back of his neck tingles, right over the ridge of his spine. Everything is backlit and surreal, and it’s entirely possible that this is a dream.

The stillness breaks and Rorschach’s leaned down and in, dropping to one elbow, his mouth somewhere just below Dan’s ear – so close that Dan can feel the moisture in his breath. He thinks of the clinging winter mist that they’d struggled with through most of February, sinking through flesh and muscle and tendon and fat and straight on into bone, and he shudders. Any illusion of innocent dreaming is gone: it’s a rippling shiver that starts somewhere in the back of his skull and shakes the breath from his chest and settles somewhere low, heavy and warm and sinking into bone like the ache of endless nights on the street.

“You’re so good,” Rorschach murmurs against his skin, and Dan can feel a shaking in him, a quiver of something terrified. “You want, but you never ask.”

Dan’s hand lifts from his side – hesitates, unsure where to land. “…should I?”

“No,” Rorschach says, too fast, and he’s shifting over him, knees bracing into the mattress between his, elbows to either side. Trapping him. “Don’t ever. Ask.” It’s just growl and modulation, vibrating against flesh stretched as tightly as drumskin; there’s the blunt roughness of teeth in there somewhere, closing lightly over the corner of his jaw. That quickly, Dan isn’t processing the situation with anything close to coherency, because kissing him is one thing but the sensation of teeth over skin is colliding, hard, with memory, all terror and hunger and he can almost feel the blood hot and wet on his face and that’s ridiculous but god, it’s _there._ It’s there. He’s shaking, breath chopped and jagged, and every nerve in his body is rallying, screaming at him to run or stay or fight or submit or lash out or _trust–  
_  
The teeth retreat, breath ghosting over his throat, and the voice sounds surprised. “…you’re scared.”

“…a little,” Dan murmurs, eyes closed tightly, and the bareness of his honesty is shocking even to his own ears, but after what they’d seen in that alley tonight…

…and maybe that’s the blood he thinks he’s seeing…

…he runs his hands blindly up over corded muscle, peels the shirt away from Rorschach’s shoulders – digs fingers into the flesh there, and he’s not sure if he’s trying to hold him in place or push him away or just apologize, but there’s sweat slicking his grip and it’s a wasted effort regardless. “But that’s okay.”

“Can do this for you, Daniel,” Rorschach mutters after a long, thoughtful moment, his free hand settling against the hollow of Dan’s throat, fingers splayed, with the light, controlled touch of handling something fragile and knowing that the best possible end is simply not breaking it, not destroying it. “Trust me?”

Dan can feel his pulse thrumming under Rorschach’s thumb. It’s code, a litany in the oldest language, one spoken and understood by every creature on the planet – I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.

Alive.

Giddy, in the back of his head: What the hell good is life, if you’re too scared to _do_ anything with it?

Roughness scrapes at his skin again, and that pulse jumps, and the body over him is oppressively close and solid and strong enough to pull him apart, to literally take him to pieces, and he’s pressing up against it before he even makes the choice, words tumbling out in a harsh, high whisper: “…ohgod. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I trust you. I do_–_”

And then he’s incapable of further assurances, trailing off into an incoherent whine, because Rorschach is nosing up under his chin, open mouth pressing into the softness just underneath. There’s a suggestion of teeth; of a wide, straddled bite that could take his throat out so quickly he’d likely not even feel it, and it terrifies Dan that all he can think to do – his big contingency plan in the face of mortal danger – is to make a small, desperate noise through parted lips, and let his eyes slip closed, and roll his face away toward the headboard. To try not to let his breath hitch too badly when a hand slides down to rake over his ribs, or when it grips at his hipbone through the thin fabric of his boxers, curls in around it, pulls him up into a rough buck against Rorschach’s thigh.

It’s dizzying, it’s too much all at once, and Dan tries to speak – but that mouth is moving wet across his throat, and a tight, gasping groan escapes before he can remember what it is he’d been wanting to say. His hand latches around the nape of Rorschach’s neck, only concerned in this instant with anchoring him in place, making sure he doesn’t rethink this and stop and pull away and _go–_

There are fingers slipping under his waistband, shocking against the heat of his skin.

This is about to cross a line.

And he wants it, he does, but that line is still so visible and jarring and he’s wanted this in an abstract and disorganized way, desire that rides on rationalization’s coattails but never quite stands on its own, for a while now – since he’d climbed into his guest bed one night shakingly certain he’d be dead before morning, and had found all the right and wrong reasons to do it anyway. But he’d had no idea it was anything close to mutual until three nights ago. Still isn’t sure that it is, because wasn’t there something hollow in his voice that night, after the gun went skittering into the shadows and the thug was knocked cold; he said Dan’s name, not Nite Owl’s, and it was so quiet and small but it still echoed, because everything echoes in the city – everything has its consequences.

[Branches at every decision point, splintering off. He slept in his own bed that night and they are not here right now. He let Rorschach go in the alley and they are not here right now. He didn’t take the matches away _–_ and they are not here right now.]

“…this is real?” Dan asks, voice almost childlike in its wavering uncertainty.

A sharp, cold rush of breath, almost a laugh but not quite, never quite. Stupid question, it says. The mouth on his throat shifts back along under his jaw to where the cowl usually covers, stubble scratching the whole way, and sucks hard enough to bruise.

“Oh, god…” Dan’s hands fist where they’re clasped against flesh, against Rorschach’s neck and his arm, and his knuckles brush against a bristle of stitches that’d only gone in last week, edges still raw between them. He buries his face into the hard, knotted muscle between shoulder and neck, mouthing over it, desperate for more contact. “You’re sure?”

“Doesn’t matter,” and it’s gritted out around suddenly clenched teeth, a thin fold of skin caught tightly between them; Dan jerks his hips, hard and helpless, and he doesn’t know if he’s ever made that sound before, and he’s not even sure just when his boxers ended up around his knees but it must have happened at some point. When tentative fingers curl around him, they are bare and chilled and dry, rasping over sensitive skin with no nuance or finesse whatsoever. “This isn’t about me.”

Clumsy, and rough and unpracticed and harsh, but Dan still bucks into it, hands scrabbling to draw the body down against him, needing that contact, to feel the insane contradiction of Rorschach’s existence pressed full-length to his own crawling heat. And it’s awkward, the angle is terrible, and Rorschach grumbles against his skin, something about needing more room – his elbow’s trapped by Dan’s arm, and his hand and Dan’s cock are pinned between them and he can’t _move_ – and it’s in the pitch more than the words, something atonal and fierce sinking in past defenses.

It’s in the grip anchored between them, and Rorschach doesn’t need to move because Dan _can, _can rock up into that heat-sink roughness, real and there and almost too tight. It’s in the way Rorschach twitches against him, an escaped tremor of something held in the tightest grip of all, controlled and controlled and controlled and not as controlled as it _should be_.

It’s…

And god, the angle is bad, but it can’t be that bad – because he can feel the entire length of Rorschach’s tripwire-tense body against his, struggling to pull away, and judging by the tremors and the noises and the urgency, he should be feeling an answering hardness that simply isn’t there.

This isn’t about–

Oh, hell. _Hell. _His heart. He barely even bleeds anymore, how could he possibly–

It takes so much willpower that it isn’t funny at all – none of this is funny, but this the least – for Dan to get a solid grip on Rorschach’s shoulders and push him up, put air back between them. Far enough to detach him from Dan’s throat, because there’s no way he can focus like that; it’s almost more distracting than the hand still wrapped around him, stroking him with something like determination, eyes questioning and intent.

“No…” Dan says, and it comes out hoarse and wobbly, ineffectual; probably because there's a good part of him that doesn't want to say it. He clears his throat, tries again: “No. Not… not one-sided like this_._ If you’re not getting anything out of it…”

His lips are bruised, Dan realizes, trailing off. Not swollen, not red; none of this has done anything to miraculously improve his circulation, that much is as clear as it gets. But still bruised, through sheer will and fervor and…

He’s staring. He doesn’t want to be.

“Getting what I need,” that mouth says, thin and pale and black-and-blued and slightly open even when there are no more words, and shiny with saliva and god _this is so dangerous_.

Dan shudders against the twisted sheets. The fear’s back, but it burns like something vital and addictive now, an opiate shiver running through his veins. Fuck, he needs this, but-

His hands run down Rorschach’s sides, settle squarely on clothed hips. He doesn’t move them, but their presence is suggestive, and he knows it, and he anchors them firmly to make it clear how much this isn’t a rejection, how badly he needs him to not run away. “…you know what I’m talking about.”

Rorschach stares blankly, hand still working lightly over him. It seems to take a stretch of seconds for him to figure out what Dan’s referring to; Dan can pinpoint the exact moment realization hits, because Rorschach’s expression seems to collapse inwards into a jumbled mess of disappointment and fear and something both peaceful and burning, all the edges overlapping.

“Can’t,” Rorschach insists, and that’s almost _pride_ in his tone, or something self-satisfied, at least, but his sentences are falling into fragments like they do after a long, hard-won fight. “Doesn’t… doesn’t do that. Anymore.” Rorschach’s fingers jitter along the underside of his cock, pinpoints of cold against the rushing heat and blood; it feels like nothing so much as a nervous twitch, but Dan still sucks in a breath, sharp and rough.

“Figured, yeah,” and Dan shifts his hands back up Rorschach’s arms, squeezing reassuringly into tense and flight-ready muscle all along the way. If he had a dollar for every time he’d been rejected due to… and he knows that Rorschach doesn’t think like normal people do with these things, but he’s at least got to be aware of society’s attitude at large and if…

“Still want to do this for you,” Rorschach says, and it’s a fast, insistent whisper, trailing off almost into silence.

‘For you’. God. There’s no good response to that.

Then there's a surge of weight against his arms as Rorschach suddenly fights the grip on him. “It’s better like this,” he insists, defensiveness rising in his voice. “Not like – not. Like them. Hurting. _Taking._ Not.” A pause. “Intentions are pure.”

“…That’s not how it – I mean. It doesn’t have to be like that,” Dan says, voice distant and ungrounded, and he’s not sure whether he’s talking about Rorschach’s assessment of sex in general or his faulty assumptions about his place in all of this, giving and unable to take, because those fingers are still moving, circling in just the right spot, and it’s _distracting_. Probably intentionally. “Not fair, for one thing, but more than that-“

Lips pull back into a snarl, teeth visible and clenched. The sudden slide of Rorschach’s hand isn’t accidental this time, Dan’s sure of it; he moans, low and broken, and his grip slackens, and Rorschach leans back in, breathing against the dampness trailed up and down Dan’s throat. “Not a child, Daniel. Not looking for fairness.”

Breathless, face roving toward the ceiling, and the words don’t make any sense but they tumble out anyway: “…what are you looking for?”

There’s no answer and Dan didn’t expect one, because he isn’t entirely sure he’d spoken that last aloud, much less loudly enough for Rorschach to even hear. The hand near his neck just shifts into his hair for a moment, fingers burrowing through the loose, sweaty strands – and he’s already so close and the gesture so jarringly tender that Dan almost comes undone right then and there, breath breaking free in short, ragged huffs.

Then the fingers tighten again, and conversation is a lost cause; Rorschach tugs at him sharply and there’s a rough scrape of teeth over his pulse point, hard, digging in enough to hurt – pushing him right up against the narrow fissure that runs the border between surrender and catastrophe, and letting him take a good clear look into the depths and he wouldn’t he _wouldn’t_ he would **_never_**–

…and it’s a long way down. Panic bubbles up, and it feels like fear all hopped up on amphetamines. He suddenly wants to run, to push Rorschach away, to scream until there’s nothing left in him because as long as he’s screaming and running and lit up with panic he’s still _alive_ and _breathing _and not _bleeding to death_…

…the hand is back in his hair, soothing through it in long, gentle strokes.

And in the end, it’s a surprisingly quiet thing – he’s spasming up against a body heavier than the air but no warmer than it, against arms and legs caging him from the unraveling morning light, against hands and teeth pulling him into raw, splintered pieces, scattering them to the air like the broken gasps of the living and the dying and the running and the breathing and the _knowing_, and it’s more desperate and blindingly bright than it’s ever been–

And he’s gone.

*

In the dim light, there’s a breath deeper than it needs to be, exhaled in a broken stutter. It sounds like something shattering and then reforming itself, a video of a falling teacup played forwards and then backwards – and it’s always more beautiful in its wholeness for having first seen it reduced to shards of ceramic and dust.

*

It takes Dan an embarrassingly long time to come back to himself, to settle back into his bones and become aware of his own nerves, of a feeling like damp electricity clinging to his skin. He can feel fingers on his chin, turning his head from one side to the other as if checking for damage; and that’s terrifying, really, that he has to _check_. Two fingers run down along his pulse, still pounding wildly so close to the surface of his skin, and linger there.

There’s the faintest brush of something cool over his mouth, and then the contact is gone, weight shifting on the mattress. By the time Dan opens his eyes, running one lax, barely compliant hand up under his chin to confirm what Rorschach’s lack of a panicked reaction is telling him – bruised, he can feel it, but not broken, not bleeding – Rorschach is curled on his side on the edge of the bed, facing away, clearly content to just sleep and call this over and done.

Dan feels good. More than good; amazing, body humming in a way his own quick attempts at tension-burning against hot shower walls can’t even approach – and that hum always carries an itch alongside it, a need to share, to make someone else feel what he’s feeling. And damn it, Rorschach is just lying there, back to him, shivering lightly, thinking he’s immune to feeling anything just because he–

And happy about it. And using it as a justification for doing this: for engaging in the unthinkable depravity of taking comfort in a friend’s touch.

This is so fucked-up.

“Hey,” he whispers, and that’s all the volume he’s getting right now – thinking isn’t working too well either, but that itch won’t subside and he has to do _something _– as he rolls towards the tense form, looping one arm around him at the waist. “Let me–”

And under his arm, Rorschach's entire body goes instantly rigid.

*

It’s too much. Went too far; too dangerous, too risky, too _much_ – but Daniel had spent so long wanting, and not saying so, so restrained and patient and if there’s ever been anyone who actually deserved to have what they wanted–

What he wants is to run, to get up and go back downstairs and out the door and–

And what?

He started this, decided to cross this line, bring this out into the light, and Daniel doesn’t deserve to have him disapp–

Then there’s an unintelligible noise from behind him, whispered with a quiet insistence, and Daniel probably thinks it’s a word, thinks it makes sense. Another, just as muffled, but coupled with the arm snaking around his middle, it takes on some kind of meaning; sounds a lot like an _offer_.

No. No no no, that’s not how this is supposed to be. He’s meant to be giving, unselfishly, not indebting Daniel to some grotesque, futile attempt at reciprocation. He doesn’t need anything, doesn’t want anything, that part of him is dead – has to be, an echo of other years, other nights spent touch-close and pressed alongside in alleys and on rooftops and drowning in the smell of him, disgracefully heated under the folds of his coat, but he’s free from it now and–

Daniel is pressing his face into the back of Rorschach’s neck, breathing into his hair, and his hand rakes across the tense muscles of his stomach in a manner that is in no way an innocent grab at closeness.

Rorschach’s up like a shot, halfway back onto his feet before he registers the grip of both arms locked determinedly around his hips. There’s not enough force there that he couldn’t get away – he doubts he’d even have to do any damage to do so, and he’s grateful for it – but it does its job of getting intent across. Stay.

“… Daniel,” he says, and there’s something in it that would normally be a warning, but his voice is too wrecked to carry it off.

Eyes narrow up at him and focus sharply through the endorphin fog, and they look like a hawk’s no matter the flushed expression, the ridiculous way his hair sticks to his face. “Don’t.”

There’s a long moment that feels a lot like a standoff, could easily escalate into one. Then, hesitantly, Rorschach settles back onto the edge of the bed. The grip around him becomes less of an entanglement, less of a sprung beartrap, but it doesn’t disappear – hands spread flat, slide up the front of his shirt, pass unflinchingly over scars and suture lines. He’s not aware of letting his eyes drift closed under the touch, but he finds himself opening them again in surprise when he feels Daniel move up behind him, kneeling on the mattress; hears him groan tightly into his ear.

His voice comes out shakier than he’d like it to and not forceful enough by far. “Daniel. What are you…”

“I just want–” And he can feel that heat against his back now, all of it, and it all shudders at once. The hands under his shirt start working the buttons from inside, clumsily. “…don’t have to do anything, just want to touch you. God. Have for years.”

[He’ll ask later, and it will be true: Daniel may not have wanted his teeth on his throat or his hand around his cock until everything fell down and the pieces stopped fitting together the same way they always had, leaving the space between them a treacherous minefield of confusion and need, but he’s wanted Rorschach’s skin under his hands almost since the day they met, as if touching were knowing and knowing would lay all the mysteries bare.]

[All this will matter is that Daniel’s been patient for even longer than he'd thought.]

Fabric peels away and it’s like his resistance is going with it, seared off by hands so hot he’s sure they’re leaving marks, and how can he deny Daniel something this simple when he’s already given him so much more than this and all he has to do is _let him_ and there’s nothing more damning in that than–

Than–

Palms sliding back around to his shoulders, kneading into the muscle; thumbs tracing down the line of his spine. There’s an electric shiver under his skin, but that’s only because there are so many nerves bundled there – it’s such a vulnerable point in the human design, like the way all the blood rides under an eighth-inch of skin in the throat. The body tries to protect itself by increasing sensitivity in those areas. That’s all it is. That’s why Daniel had reacted so strongly to–

No, no, that’s not it. There’d been something else there, feeding that response. Fear. Not terror, not fight-or-flight, but a faint underlying awareness of how easily he could have just _bitten down, _torn Daniel apart, buried his face in that hot pooling blood, ended all of this.

And Daniel had allowed it anyway. Enjoyed it. Let it push him over that horrifying edge, into freefall. There’s some feeling rising up the back of his throat in response, and it’s horrifying, because he’d needed more than anything tonight to feel human, and Daniel had only enjoyed it because…

But then Daniel’s forehead presses between his shoulderblades, the motion warm and tender and something like burrowing – and he’s obviously still coming down from that rush, sweaty hair pressed into his spine, breath ragged against the skin. There’s a sound like a whimper, bitten back, and that feeling is still bubbling but Daniel’s hands feel like acceptance, like something that doesn’t need to pretend he’s anything warmer or safer, that suffers the flesh under them as it is. His hands_–  
_  
Rorschach’s losing track of where they are, where each touch lands, hot little sparks of contact, becoming unpredictable and that’s _dangerous_ – and his breath catches when he feels fingers splay out over his chest, palm riding lightly over his heart, so much raw care in the touch that it twists into something like pain. The stillness there feels like a betrayal and a travesty, scraping against his ribs.

He really has nothing to worry about. Nothing–

Nothing will come of this, of this ache under Daniel’s patient, waiting hand, of the way nerves still jump and jitter like they always used to, whenever he got too close or lingered too long. But he still catches Daniel’s other wrist in an iron grip when fingers try to dip under the waistband of his slacks. “I told you. Can’t–” he breaks off. The hand doesn’t twist in his grip, doesn’t fight him. The other stays where it is; Rorschach realizes disconnectedly that he’s waiting, too. “Don’t need _that_.”

Daniel coughs a short laugh over his shoulder, pressing his mouth to the pale, speckled flesh. “If nothing’ll happen, then what’s the harm?”

There’s a silence, and there’s a flutter under the hand on his chest. And Rorschach lets go of Daniel's wrist.

The button slips silently, the zipper almost as easily, and then that heat is riding down against his thighs, sliding in between with an ease and familiarity that feels, on the skin, like terror–

–mouth working along the knobs of his spine, carefully avoiding the injuries that are still sore and raw, pressing into his throat with the deep and gentle warmth of honest affection–

–fingers digging into his thigh, sliding up over the jutting curve of his hipbone, trailing fire behind, and it’s like there’s kerosene in his veins where all the blood should be, just under the skin, waiting for enough heat to ignite and spread and burn him to ashes, gone–

“Daniel,” and it isn’t right how ragged his voice is, how torn apart it is at the edges. “Didn’t want… didn’t ask for–”

“Neither did I,” Daniel murmurs against his shoulder, a grin in his voice and obvious in the curl of lips against skin. His fingers slide inward, drag through the coarse ginger, skim over soft and unresponsive flesh, as blue-grey pale as the rest of him; Rorschach jerks forward sharply, the reaction so sudden and surprising that he can’t even stifle the choked groan rising up out of somewhere frightening and hollow and damningly familiar and it's supposed to be _dead _and _gone–  
_  
“You said it was better not to ask,” Daniel says, and his own breath is suddenly shorter, more strained, ghosting hot across his ear. His hand–

His hand–

“Tell me to stop and I will,” and it’s just a whisper now, as muffled as his first advances had been, filtered through some emotion so thick and muddy that Rorschach knows if he lets it get hold of him it’ll pull him down forever. “But you need this, if you’ve spent months thinking you couldn’t just because… god,” and the exasperation sounds so knowing. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Doesn’t work that way. Doesn’t–

Miscalculation. Mistake.

“Nng. Don’t need. I.” A short breath, more a cough than a gasp, panic rising in his tone. “Didn’t. _Before,_” Rorschach insists, because he assessed this all incorrectly and he needs to get out before it’s too late, and he could just tell him to stop but the word won't form on his tongue, and it should anger him, what Daniel’s insinuating: that he used to crawl home after patrol, slink into his cot, hunch over himself lost to depravity and _thoughts_ and the motion-blurred image of his partner’s elegant violence etched behind his eyes, the memorized sound of Daniel’s voice and laughter and footfalls over asphalt dragging loose a sick, tortured release. Should be _furious.  
_  
But Daniel’s hand is around him, moving over his softness with a precise, familiar touch and not the slightest hint of hesitation or revulsion – and it’s burning him, blistering his defenses and his denials into so many charred remnants, bits of membrane all blackened around the edges, dropping away into piles around him. All that’s left underneath is something like truth, aching in the air like an open wound.

He was never supposed to _know.  
_  
“Let me do this for you,” Daniel whispers, and it’s low and desperate and pleading, and it’s an echo, stolen words – and it’s all Rorschach can do to grip one hand white-knuckled into Daniel’s forearm and hold on and try not to burn completely away.

*

“Isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Rorschach’s hunched forward and curled in on himself _–_ really, this isn't how it was supposed to be _–_ and his voice is grit-rougher than usual, but he knows that Daniel will not accept persuasion. Not now. He’s glowing like something younger and fiercer and bloodied by its first kill; he’s irrepressible, nuzzling in against Rorschach’s neck, almost purring.

“_Taking,”_ Rorschach spits, venomous.

Daniel’s hand comes to rest against his breastbone again – he can’t stop a short sound from breaking free at the fire that lights under the touch, at the sheer heat of Daniel’s presence, panic wrapped up in disgust – and the hand pulls him back to lean against his chest, heavy and tired and something he can’t identify but it’s too much right now. Just. Too much. “Shhh,” Daniel soothes, fingernails running lightly over his heart, one finger splaying to the side to trace a line of old, old scar tissue by touch. “You didn’t take anything that – you didn’t take it. I offered,” he says, a strange tone of finality in his voice, something that says ‘we’ll talk about it later.’

But they won’t. Because this isn’t how it was supposed to be. Not supposed to be about him. Not supposed to feel like this, sinking into a decadent fog of contentment, alive and electric everywhere Daniel’s touching him. Not supposed to _take.  
_  
He’d thought he was safe. Had tried so hard to be sure, had tried thoughts, sounds, smells, watching Daniel move from the corner of his eye, testing his reactions, quietly approving of the results – but his body is still a betrayer, even after all of these years, even corrupted and crippled this far. And his will alone is obviously not enough.

He has to find a way to be stronger than this.

*

  
**V.**

When he wakes in the afternoon, Dan finds himself tangled in his sheets, and he only thrashes like that when his subconscious is worried enough about attack or ambush that the scenarios invade his dreams. When he’s alone.

He can’t even tell how long Rorschach’s been gone; the sheets and pillows would be cold even if he’d only gotten up from them thirty seconds before.

He presses a hand to the emptiness anyway.

*

The guest room is unoccupied, for all that the books and papers and clothing are untouched. The pantry has not been ransacked, and the cut of meat Dan had pulled down to the refrigerator to thaw the night before is where he left it on the top rack.

In the basement, he finds a piece of paper out of place, folded over onto itself, writing on the inside: _Could have killed you. Accepted threat too easily, bared throat like prey. Too dangerous to continue. .][.  
_  
And Dan sits down heavily at the workbench, turning the scrap over and over in his hands, because they’ve done a lot of communicating by hastily scrawled notes and he knows this shaking, barely legible cant to the handwriting, knows that it means fabrication layered over some core truth – remembers how miserable and shocked and cut adrift Rorschach had sounded last night, when he’d finally lost his grip and tensed against Dan’s chest, rolled his head back onto Dan’s shoulder, spilled broken and shuddering over his hand – and even on paper, he’s a terrible, terrible liar.

*

Days pass. He still patrols – he’s more wary without someone covering his back, less liable to suffer fools in the shadow-spaces of New York’s four-AM death throes. Feels less of a childish thrill when he’s left standing among the unconscious and the bound and the weakly crawling away, trying to evade his notice – when he’s won, because there’s something missing and this is where he feels it most acutely, in these violent and freeze-framed moments of mortality hanging in the angle of a blade, in the force behind a punch. Winning alone feels like a hollow and necessary ritual, repeated over the course of the night with very little in the way of variation, and he mostly just wants to get it over with.

Right now though, it wouldn’t be hollow. It’d be a damn miracle. There are twelve of them, and they’re armed, and yes, Nite Owl’s good – but he’s not that good.

Five of them are down, and he’s taken a hit to the ribs and a hit to the head – the first one won’t be a problem until later, but the second one might be, because he’s already feeling wooden and strange and spinny in its wake _–_ when he registers the clanging rattle of the fire escape, jarred in its brackets when the weight leaves it, and the sound of booted feet hitting the ground somewhere behind him.

A back presses against his in the center of the closing noose: compact, and wiry, and moving in perfect coordination with him as he circles to keep as many of the thugs as he can in sight, footwork flawless on the uneven and garbage-strewn floor of the alley.

Below the goggles, Dan smiles.

The fight doesn’t last much longer.

*

Afterwards, Rorschach takes him by the shoulders and drags him into another alley, away from the circus the crime scene is about to become. There will be sirens, and arrests, and someone will offer the almost-victim a blanket and, if they’re feeling generous, a cup of coffee. Are you all right, ma’am? This is Sergeant O’Keefe, he just wants to talk to you about what happened… It’s an old, old play, one either of them could act out by rote, and not one they need to be there for.

So: down one corridor, up another, Rorschach grumbling the entire way about Dan taking on more than he can handle, about how badly that could have ended, something deadpan-snarky about what Dan would do without him. He thinks he catches something in there about what Rorschach would do without _him_, but if he does it’s a slip and he doesn’t comment, just keeps pace as best as he can and tries not to be too surprised when his back hits the brick, hard.

Deft hands slide under the cowl, push it back, and there’s a real hunger radiating off of Rorschach now, not just want dressed up in frustration and confusion and pain. It occurs to Dan – right around the time that he feels Rorschach’s breath on his throat – that he’s been in parts unknown for four days, and what’s he been eating, if anything? It took longer than four days to get him to this state before but he had a _purpose_ to keep him focused then and…

“Uhm. Rorschach? Are you, ah– I mean…”

He remembers, disconnectedly, that he was hard the first time this happened too, almost a year and a lifetime of silent self-assurances ago. He’s not really processing well enough right now to be disturbed.

Then it doesn’t matter, because there are lips on his throat, on his mouth – the soft leather of gloves resting against his temples, thumbs digging in, and the animal need rising in the growl subsides into something more human. There’s a note of fear in it, and in the rough press of brick through his cloak and costume he can feel his ribs pulling; can see, abstracted, the chains and knives flashing towards him, whistling in the air.

“Just saved you, Daniel,” and the same tremor is there, in the voice, anxiety tracing rough over his skin. One finger runs along an hours-old gash in the fabric of his uniform, blood crusted black over it, stiff. “Not going to hurt you.” A pause, then with something like sarcasm: “Hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“What? No,” Dan almost laughs, bared head falling hard against the wall. “I never really thought you’d–” No, not true – a minute ago, he’d been afraid of exactly that. Honesty here, because he knows how Rorschach can always tell a lie, even a well-intentioned one; can feel it in his bones like the itching hum of nearby high-tension lines. “…okay, I mean, if you hadn’t been eating, I might be worried, but – look. I trust you. Really. I wasn’t just… saying that, before. To get something out of you.”

It feels like a long pause, Dan heaving breath in the quiet, hair grinding into the brick, throat bared and vulnerable because he’s finally sure of it – that trust is real, is there, is shaking his heart with its uncompromising intensity.

“I meant it,” Dan says quietly, swallowing around the dryness of the words.

Lips press to his pulse, soft and careful. “I've been a poor partner,” Rorschach rumbles, low and reserved, and the feel of his voice makes Dan ache acutely somewhere inside, makes the grey swirl at the periphery of his vision hungrier, greedier. “Made a bad decision, left you to patrol alone, put you at risk. You've... stood by me through worse. Deserved better. Apologies.”

“It’s all right,” Dan mumbles, forgiveness and permission and a question that won’t get an answer – and something’s obviously changed in the last four days or possibly the last forty minutes, something’s slotted into place, because Dan meets no resistance when he threads his hands between the flaps of the trenchcoat, runs them up under jacket and shirt and rakes gloved fingers down Rorschach’s sides, thumbs sliding under the waistband to circle in the hollow of his hips – drag them sharply in against his. Something’s different, something fundamental and dark and needy looming over them, working smokelike fingers through the cracks in the mortar and _twisting_. Rorschach leans into the touch, crowding Dan painfully back against the wall, fingers working at seams and belt clasps – and then they’re just a pair of shadows rocking together in the shifting remnants of streetlight, a pocket of darkness against the brickwork,

_(but of course there’s nothing there in the dark that isn’t also there in the light)  
_  
and like all shadows, they are gone long before morning breaks.

*

They never talk about why he left or why he came back; why he no longer stiffens and pulls away and cries out like a thing betrayed when Dan puts his hands on him, forces him to feel. Maybe they should, _really _they should, but some things get stronger and sturdier the longer they’re left alone, not poked or prodded at, and Dan doesn’t want to push his luck.

The note goes into his dresser drawer, for safekeeping.

*

It’s a bizarre, quiet moment, a few days later – the span between beats, and where Rorschach’s concerned there’s room for a lot to happen in that space. He’s just leaned in and licked under Dan’s ear, a quick serpent-strike motion, rough and unexpected – and in his surprise, Dan almost misses the thoughtful ‘hrm’ against his skin. Almost, but not quite.

“What?”

Another noise, less committal, and the tongue is back, slower this time. Lingering over the skin. Then: “I can taste you.”

A breathless bark of laughter, and Dan’s in an irreverent mood; it was a good night out there, a very good night, and he’s feeling indestructible. “What, you’re just now noticing…? I figured that was the appeal. Because I mean, technically_–_”

A grunt, a light nip, cutting him off mid-sentence. He never makes Dan say these things out loud, and maybe he doesn’t want to _hear_ it, but it’s true: with all the trappings of sentience and intelligence and this abstract business of the human condition stripped away, he’s just so much uncooked meat.

Dan swallows tightly, still smiling and mouth inexplicably dry.

“Stupid,” mumbled close to his ear. “More than just flesh.” One hand settles awkwardly jumbled fingers on Dan’s hip, still navigating this strange new thing, mapping permissions and boundaries. Negotiating. “The thought of it, though, makes you…” A short noise of confusion, bitten-blunt fingernails raking over the skin. “Don’t understand why.”

Dan stares at the ceiling; thinks of handwriting ruined by anxiety and fear, and of a bite-pattern of bruising that’s long since faded but that he can still almost feel on his arm sometimes, if he presses in just the right spot, and he knows he really _should_ be cautious, here. The words spill out anyway, careless and honest. “…I don’t know. Same reason going out there and getting into fights every night always has. Adrenaline or something. It’s just sort of. There.”

Adrenaline. Intensity. Violence. Danger that isn’t really danger, threat that isn’t really a threat.

“I mean, you’ve _always _been dangerous. God, I used to just watch you sometimes, the way you just take people apart, the way you _move_–”

Rorschach shifts, levers himself up over Dan with a coiled and animal grace, and the pre-dawn light filtering in through the blinds catches in his eyes and lights them up with something fierce and intent – and Dan realizes, with a feeling like steel slipping between his ribs, that there’s more than one way to be devoured.

*

  
**VI.****  
**  
They patrol and they live as best they can and they still fight sometimes, stupid vicious arguments about all the same subjects they’ve never been able to meet in the middle on – but they don’t talk about it when Dan lets a high-profile drugrunner get away because he’s too busy pulling a knife out of Rorschach’s neck and they _really_ don’t talk about it when Rorschach blows a bust because Dan is bleeding out on the ground, red running through his fingers no matter how hard he presses down. Later, analyzing with hindsight’s exacting gaze, Dan won’t even know for sure how he survived – just that there was pain and there were hands and there was a grip on him, on something deep inside and intangible and essential, that wasn’t willing to let go.

And after the long nights – and sometimes before the long nights – they find a balance running thick and invisible between each other’s hands, between the cold and the heat and the stuttered assurances, shot through with an acute awareness of how brief their lives will be and how violently they will end and how impossible the good things are to hold onto. And it’s okay, it’s safe, because it doesn’t change anything, and because neither of them ever _asks_, in that quiet place behind Dan’s shuttered windows and against kitchen walls and in the darkened sweep of the Owlship’s decking and on the cold cement floor of the basement. They never ask for anything. They just give,

_(and are those crescent-moon fingernail scrapes on his arms and the bruised impressions of teeth on your throat just there because they’re there, or are they a clumsy attempt at a cipher of possession and need in a language neither of you understand, safely forgotten, dead?)_

and if the simple acceptance paints more like_ taking_ on either of their faces in the moments before the world goes away, well – those moments pass quickly enough, and are easily overlooked between four-AM clock ticks and then forgotten in the sallow, forgiving light of morning.

*

  
**VII.****  
**  
Moths are starting to collect in the gutters outside of Daniel’s home, green-white wings spread and still, brittle like autumn leaves. Their wingspots stare up at the sky, fixed and unblinking eyes, and Rorschach nudges one with the toe of his boot, unsurprised when it doesn’t stir.

They live such horrifically short lives.

*

* *

*

_"April is the cruellest month, breeding  
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  
Memory and desire, stirring  
Dull roots with spring rain.  
Winter kept us warm, covering  
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding  
A little life with dried tubers.  
Summer surprised us..."_

-T.S. Eliot, 'The Waste Land', 'I. The Burial of the Dead', 1922.


End file.
